There has been an influx of new fans to the WNBA in recent years. Maybe you’re one of them - welcome! The surge in popularity has largely been driven by a few key players that became household names even among non-basketball fans.
I only started following the WNBA closely around 2020, 23 years after it’s founding, and went to my first game (shoutout Chicago Sky) in 2021. But then I got into it. Like really into it. Like I went through box scores from precursor women’s basketball associations in the 1980s1 into it. I also made it through every game the Sky ever played on Basketball Reference, and along the way learned about most of the players in WNBA history.
I don’t necessarily recommend going into that depth of rabbit hole, but there is immense value in understanding and appreciating the women who built the league into what it is today, and set the foundation for this skyrocketing popularity. One fun way to learn that history is through the lens of today’s players. Want to know what Tamika Catchings was like? Think A’ja Wilson’s current stretch of offensive and defensive dominance, extended over a decade-plus. Sheryl Swoopes? Similar impact as Sabrina Ionescu, on the court and off of it. Lisa Leslie? The OG Jonquel Jones, who could dunk.
The tables below show the top five comparable seasons for some notable 2025 players, based on their percentile rank in a number of statistical categories, capturing both offensive and defensive impact. In pulling these together I benefitted greatly from prior work by Neil Paine, both his similarity index methodology and WNBA estimated RAPTOR data.
This is a statistical comparison, determined by on-court output, so while most comparisons pass the eye test, it doesn’t necessarily capture all the nuances of playing styles. For instance, you’ll see that one comp for the 6’4” Breanna Stewart is 5’11” Alana Beard. Thankfully, my friend and editing wiz Danny Ball has put together some sweet side-by-side videos. He’s gone deep into the archives to pull together highlights of current players with their historical counterparts that give you a sense for how modern players are taking inspiration from the legends of the game and adding their own spin.
The MVP Contenders
(Click the black buttons above the table to swipe through to other players)
Napheesa Collier: Breanna Stewart, Nneka Ogwumike
Napheesa Collier is, simply put, dominating. She ranks in the 99th percentile on offense and 92nd on defense. She is in the upper 80th percentile in basically every important stat outside of shot selection - she likes the mid-range more than most, but that seems to be working for her with 39 points per 100 possessions. We haven’t seen this level of mastery since, well, 2024 Napheesa Collier.
But beyond herself and Breanna Stewart last season, Collier’s closest player comparison is Nneka Ogwumike2 who, incidentally, was the first to get the best of Collier’s Lynx this season, handing them their first loss last week. Nneka has been in the national conversation since she was named the top high school prospect in 2008 and selected first overall in the 2012 draft by LA. She joined Candace Parker on that Sparks roster, and led the team in win shares on her way to Rookie of the Year honors. Seven years later, Collier followed a similar path: drafted first overall to a historically great franchise with a top-10 all-time player. In Collier’s case, her veteran was Sylvia Fowles, Parker’s noted rival from their multiple championship face-offs.
Both Ogwumike and Collier had terrific starts to their WNBA careers, and then just kept getting better. Ogwumike had her best season in year four, when she won MVP and the WNBA championship; Collier is having her best season right now, and is currently one of the front-runners to take home her first MVP and title. She’s using some of Nneka’s fancy footwork in the post to try to recreate those accomplishments:
While it’s not captured in the stats or video, this comparison is also apt for their off-court contributions. Nneka “Madame President” Ogwumike has served as the President of the WNBA Player’s Association for many years, and is active in the fight for social justice. Collier, for her part, has been an inspirational model of motherhood in professional sports, and was named to Time’s 100 Most Influential People of 2025 for co-founding the Unrivaled league with Breanna Stewart.
Natasha Cloud: Chelsea Gray, Courtney Vandersloot, Penny Taylor
Natasha Cloud is off to a blazing start in her 10th WNBA season, and 1st in New York. She ranks in the 93rd percentile in RAPTOR through 10 games,3 posting numbers similar to 2023 Chelsea Gray or Courtney Vandersloot or 2014 Penny Taylor. I’m guessing most of you are familiar with the Point Gawd’s work in Las Vegas, assisting A’ja Wilson in back-to-back championship seasons in 2022-23. That came after a successful first half of her career in LA, assisting Nneka Ogwumike and Candace Parker en route to their 2016 championship. And of course you know Courtney Vandersloot, the best point guard ever.
Penny Taylor may be lesser known, but she shouldn’t be. The Aussie was a key piece in three Mercury championships, helping Diana Taurasi capture her rings. Both championship rings and wedding rings - Penny and Diana got married in 2017! At Taylor’s induction into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame, Taurasi said, “She’s the consummate professional. When you talk about a winner, you talk about Penny, in all facets of life.”
As well as a great passer, Taylor was a bucket, cashing in 50% of twos, 38% of threes, and 86% of free throws over her career, which comes together for the 14th best true shooting percentage in league history. She made two All-WNBA and three All-Star teams in her 10-year career, and left the league as one of the top 10 all time in offensive rating. Cloud is having a better defensive year (the best of her career as well), though Taylor was no walk-over on the defensive end, averaging two “stocks”4 per game.
A’ja Wilson: Tamika Catchings, Napheesa Collier, Candace Parker
Not bad comps. Aj’a’s been on a tear the last five years, winning three MVPs and two Defensive Player of the Year (DPOY) awards; Tamika Catchings exhibited similar levels of domination . . . for over a decade. Just look at this list of Catch’s accomplishments on Basketball Reference:
12x All-WNBA. 12x All-Defensive. She only got the singular MVP trophy, but she finished top 5 in 10 of her first 11 years. She was a defensive fiend, as evidenced by those 7x steals champion and 5x DPOYs. She racked up the most defensive win shares over a career and is second in offensive win shares, which makes her the greatest winner in WNBA history, with 93 total win shares. That’s 20 more than second place Diana Taurasi, in 100 fewer games. As I’ve written about, there are only a handful of players that can match Tamika Catchings’s rate of output, but none were close to maintaining it for as long as she did.
A’ja Wilson comes close though; in her first seven years A’ja has averaged 0.305 win shares per 48 minutes, not too far off Catching’s 0.312. As you can see in the table above, they go about getting their numbers a bit differently - A’ja more rebounds and blocks, Tamika more free throws and steals - but both can exert their will seemingly at ease, and take over the game and league on both sides of the ball:
Breanna Stewart: Alana Beard, Janel McCarville
Stewie’s counting numbers are down a bit to start the year, partly because the Liberty are blowing out opponents so often. She’s playing three fewer minutes per game vs her career average. By the advanced stats she is still having an all-time season, ranking in the top 3% of the league. As a result, her closest comps are a bit more of a throwback, to lesser known players, but still terrific seasons.
Alana Beard entered the WNBA in 2004 (the same draft as Diana Taurasi) and played 14 seasons, the first 6 in Washington where she got MVP and DPOY consideration nearly every year. Foot injuries put a two-year pause on her career, and she never found the same offensive form, but she continued as a stalwart defender, making four more First Team All-Defense in her second act, including finally winning a DPOY award in 20175 … and then another in 2018. She was also a key starter on that 2016 championship Sparks team with Nneka, Chelsea Gray, Penny Taylor, and Candace Parker.
What makes her an interesting comp for the 6’4” Stewart is that she was only 5’11! And yet in these two seasons they put up nearly identical ranks across points per possession, shooting percentages, assists, rebounds, blocks, and overall RAPTOR.
Janel McCarville is perhaps the more obvious comp, another Forward-Center also selected first overall in the draft, a decade before Stewart. However, unlike Stewart, McCarville had a slow start, averaging just two points and three rebounds as a rookie. She struggled for a few years in Charlotte, but turned her career around after being picked up by the Liberty in the 2007 dispersal draft. She won Most Improved Player (MIP) her first season in NY, and continued her upward trajectory to a peak in 2008, the year of comparison to Stewie, when she posted career high splits: 14 points, 5 rebounds, 2 assists, and 2 steals per game. She regressed back after that, with personal issues leaving her out of the league for two seasons, but did redeem herself as a starter on the 2013 WNBA champion Lynx.
Allisha Gray: Monique Curry, Tiffany Hayes
Allisha Gray is having a breakout year. As No Cap Space wrote last week, “the goods have always been there. For one reason or another, we just haven’t gotten peak Allisha Gray in the W. Until this year.” She’s been on an upward trajectory the last two seasons, named an All-Star both years, and she’s taken a big jump this year posting numbers nearly double her career averages in points and assists, while also upping her rebounding and shooting efficiency. She has contributed the second most wins in the WNBA thus far.
Yet, her closest comps are still Sixth Players of the Year (6POY), great players but not necessarily supportive of the MVP-caliber case she is making. Monique Curry won 6POY in 2017 after getting traded halfway through the season for a second round pick; I don’t think the Dream will be trading Gray any time soon. Meanwhile Tiffany Hayes won 6POY last season with the Aces, before finding a new home in Golden State.
So what makes these players similar? While Gray is scoring more and liked more by the advanced stats, all three have similar usage, free throw, turnover, and rebounding rates. But really, these players aren’t as similar as some of the other comparisons. All the comps above had a similarity score under 10, while Gray’s most similar player is a 13 (higher is less similar). Which means Gray is putting up a set of stats we really haven’t seen before. And she’s not the only one.
The Unique Stars
Alyssa Thomas: Alyssa Thomas, Alyssa Thomas
Two of the seasons most statistically similar to 2025 Alyssa Thomas are 2017 Alyssa Thomas and 2023 Alyssa Thomas. She is a player in her own category, doing a little bit of everything on the court. She made triple-doubles cool again in 2023, and almost stole an MVP because of it.
Once again, and for a new team, she is doing it all. She places in the top half of most statistical categories, including leading the league in assist percentage. She’s assisted a ridiculous 55% of her teammates field goals, 10 percentage points better than the existing best level of all time.
Caitlin Clark: Courtney Vandersloot, Diana Taurasi
The best point guard of all time and the best shooting guard of all time. Those aren’t bad comps for Caitlin Clark in year two. But they’re not really comparable. Clark is farther away from Sloot, statistically, than Alyssa Thomas is from Sloot.
Like Thomas, Clark does everything on the court and has been racking up her own triple doubles so quickly she already has the second most all-time; a quarter of the way through her second season. As a Point Guard, she goes about it in a different way than Forward Alyssa Thomas. Clark combines elite passing (she would be on pace for the best assist percentage of all time if it wasn’t for Thomas this year) with a magical ability from six feet beyond the three-point line, which drives her usage rate up significantly higher than that of Alyssa Thomas.
But again, Clark is not just doing it differently than Alyssa Thomas. She is doing it differently than basically anyone to ever play in the WNBA.
Satou Sabally: Tamika Catchings, DeWanna Bonner, Napheesa Collier
Satou Sabally, the “Unicorn”, is also a unique player with the closest comp at a similarity score of 14. It is interesting to note that the three closest comparisons are to all-time players, in years just around their peaks: Catchings in 2015, Bonner in 2020, and Collier in 2021. Last season at age 26, Sabally joined Tamika Catchings as the only players in WNBA history to average more than 15 points, 7 rebounds, and 3 assists through the first 90 games of their career. I wouldn’t be surprised to see continued improvement from Sabally this year and next, and see her in the MVP conversation sooner rather than later.
The Closest Comps
We’ve already mentioned Collier (with herself), Cloud (with Gray6), and Wilson (with Catch7), but here are some other notable similarities.
Sabrina Ionescu: Sheryl Swoopes, Katie Douglas
Sheryl Swoopes is a legend of the early WNBA, who paved the path for many of today’s stars. On the court, she won four titles with the Comets, three MVP awards, three DPOYs, and led the league in scoring twice. She could truly do it all. One of those MVP awards came in 2005, when Swoopes averaged 19 points, 5 rebounds, 3 assists, and 3 steals. That’s a high bar, but Sabrina is meeting it, leading her (WNBA best) Liberty team in wins added thus far. Most of the MVP conversation is focused on Collier, Wilson, Gray, and even Ionescu’s teammates Cloud and Stewart, but Sabrina is making a case herself.
Swoopes is also famous as the first women’s basketball player with a Nike signature shoe, the Air Swoopes. It took a while, but more WNBA player’s are getting signature shoes including Sabrina. Now she’s now hoping she can follow in Swoopes’s footsteps and win four titles in a row (or at least repeat with another title this season).
Jonquel Jones: Lisa Leslie
Well this is high praise. Jonquel Jones’s closest comps are two Lisa Leslie seasons, at the beginning and end of her illustrious career. While Leslie did a bit more scoring (Jones, a former MVP, doesn’t have as heavy a load now playing with Stewart and Ionescu), they have similar overall impacts when their team has the ball, and they are both excellent rebounders and defenders. They are the only two players in WNBA history with multiple playoff games of 25+ points and 15+ rebounds.
Leslie has talked about Jones before, including ahead of last year’s Finals when she urged Jones to be “bigger and better” if the Liberty wanted to take home the trophy. Jones responded as the Liberty walked away champions with Jones as the Finals MVP.
We saw some Instagram photos of Leslie working out Satou Sabally this offseason, but it appears Jones may be studying her game as well.
Jackie Young: Jewell Lyod, Tynesha Lewis
In the rare teammate comp, Jackie Young’s most similar player is Jewell Lyod. The Aces traded for Jewell Lyod this offseason to pair with Young in the Vegas backcourt, but things have not been going well. Young’s points per game are up, but on a personal high usage rate 20% higher than last season. She ranks in the 79th percentile in RAPTOR, dropping out of a spot in the top decile she held three of the last four seasons.
Meanwhile, Jewell Lyod’s production has fallen across the board since her days as the number one option in Seattle, and she is averaging her lowest point total since her rookie season in 2015. Her closest comp this year is to 2001 Ruthie Bolton, a star on the 1996 US Olympic team, but who was a rotation player past her prime by the early oughts.
This trade has not played out the way the recent champion / now-0.500 Aces hoped, perhaps partly because of a little too much overlap between the new teammates. That said, they did just combine for 49 points in a big comeback win, maybe a sign they are figuring out how to maximize their respective talents while playing with and off one another.
The Rookies
Finally, let’s take a quick look at the returns for some of the highly touted rookies through their first dozen or so games in the W.
Paige Bueckers: Andrea Stinson, Skylar Diggins
Andrea Stinson is a former MVP-level player; she finished second to Cynthia Cooper in the WNBA’s inaugural 1997 season and actually increased her shooting and scoring numbers in this year of comparison to Bueckers.
But perhaps the more interesting comparison here is to Skylar Diggins (-Smith at the time). Diggins was drafted third overall by the Tulsa Shock (who became the Dallas Wings) in 2013. She would have been the number one overall pick, as Paige was, in most years, but this was the famous “Three to See” draft with Brittney Griner and Elena Delle Donne selected ahead of Diggins.
What’s especially impressive for Paige is these comparisons are to 2018 and 2022 Diggins, after she was an established vet in the league and already a multi-time All-Star. It’s a small sample size with just 8 games played, but Paige’s 17 points, 4 rebounds, and 6 assists per game would put her 11th all time in Modified8 Points + Rebounds + Assists among Rookies. She’s already among the tippy top tier of players in offensive production eight games into her pro career and is above average on defense, feats that took even the great Skylar Diggins several years to reach.
In going through the video, Danny noted that Bueckers and Diggins approach the point guard role in their own ways. Skylar typically wants to get all the way to the rim no matter who is in front of her, while Paige is more than happy to pull-up with space in the 11-18 foot range:
Sonia Citron: Shavonte Zellous, Mwadi Mabika
Sonia Citron is having an excellent start to her WNBA career, currently sitting in the top ~half of the league in estimated RAPTOR on both offense and defense and the top 20% in shooting efficiency, typically a harder thing to master as a young player. Her closest comps are to a couple of veteran seasons from Shavonte Zealous, a 14-year pro and former All-Star in 2013, the year of comparison. Zealous also won MIP that season, doubling her scoring to 15 points per game. Citron is obviously ineligible for the improvement award as a rookie, but it’s pretty good praise to make that leap in your first professional season.
Kiki Iriafen: Glory Johnson, Adrienne Goodson
Citron’s teammate in Washington is having arguably an even better season. The fourth overall pick recently won May’s Rookie of the Month, averaging 13 points and 9 rebounds on 50% shooting. Her closest comp finished second in MIP voting to Shavonte Zealous in 2013, as Glory Johnson joined Zealous on their first All-Star teams. Johnson and Irifen both dominate the glass, and are efficient scorers in the restricted area where they take about 40% of their shots.
Janelle Salaün: Kahleah Copper, Janeth Arcain
Janelle Salaün has been a bucket in Golden State, and is a major reason the upstart Valkyries have won half of their games as an expansion team. She’s making two threes a game on 40% shooting and is 91% from the free throw line (she’s only missed one). Her most similar comparison player is Wubble Kahleah Copper, when she made a major jump from role player to budding star. Copper has been an All-Star every year since, and a key piece in the Sky’s 2021 championship run, so Valkyries fans should feel very good to have a player putting up similar numbers in her first season (and will miss her as she plays in EuroBasket for the next few weeks).
Dominique Malonga: Stefanie Dolson, Jantel Lavender
The Storm are starting slowly with the 19-year French phenom, giving her time to adjust to the league and lifestyle. She’s averaging under 10 minutes per game, but has been fairly efficient in limited opportunities. Her stat line is fairly unique in the history of the league (as is her ability to dunk with ease), but her closest comp is 30-year old Stefanie Dolson, an excellent 12-year journey woman and two-time All-Star who has been a solid contributor to every team she’s played for.
That’s it for now, but let me know what other players you’re curious about, and I can share their most similar players. You can DM me on here, email at chrisgunther.writes@gmail.com, or follow on Instagram @ChartingHoops.
Including one founded and run by a guy named “Lightning”.
A lower similarity score represents a more similar player. Technically, it is a weighted Euclidean distance of the stats displayed in the table.
Although she is, incredibly, just fifth among her Liberty teammates.
Steals + Blocks.
Notably, the year after Catchings retired.
Ha, gray cloud ☁️.
*Modified Points + Assists + Rebounds simply scales assists and rebounds down 0.65 relative to points, in accordance with their relative weights in Neil Paine's Estimated RAPTOR.
"But then I got into it. Like really into it." (can confirm 😂)